Modern society offers people many opportunities and in fact places many demands on people to communicate with each other, often over great distances. Modern society also is becoming increasingly mobile. To meet the demand for mobile communications, many new communications services have emerged, to allow people to communicate freely as they roam, without the need for a fixed network connection.
Common examples of mobile communications services include cellular telephone service, personal communication service (PCS), personal digital assistants (PDAs) with wireless communications capabilities, wireless e-mails through Blackberries or the like, and even two-way paging services. For any such service, the user has a mobile station, which provides two-way communication via an appropriate wireless communication network and serves as the user's terminal device.
As part of its operation, a mobile communication station provides a number of status indicators to the user. The cellular telephone for example, provides a “ringing” notice of an incoming call. In modern examples of such telephones, the actual notification typically includes a display and an audible tone, and most such phones offer a “vibration” mode in which the unit vibrates in a perceptible manner. Typically, the user can select between several different types of available ringing tones and one or more vibration modes. Such mobile stations will often provide another tone and attendant display for at least one other condition, such as low battery.
The mobile station usually comes equipped with a good size battery. Typically, the mobile station also has a display screen for data output and a keypad for data entry. To contain such elements of useful size, yet maintain portability, there is a physical limitation on the form factor of mobile station. The station can only become so small yet provide all the necessary features. Today, most mobile stations have holders that allow the user to attach the unit to a belt or the like. Although many users find carrying their mobile stations in this way convenient, others prefer to carry their units in their pockets, purses or the like.
However, when transported in such a manner, the user of a mobile station may not hear the tone signals provided by the mobile station, particularly in a high-noise environment; and the user may not be able to feel a vibrating call indication. Increasing the power, for example of the audible tone generation, may help make the notification more readily perceptible. However, even increased power may not always be adequate; and the increased power reduces battery life, which is a critical resource in a portable communication device. As a result, a person who does not like to hang the mobile phone on a belt or the like, can easily miss the incoming call, especially when mobile phone is in vibration mode. The other problem is such a user may not know when the station is running out of battery, because the user may not timely view the low-battery indicator on the station's display.
Hence a need exists for a technique to extend status notifications from a mobile station, in situations in which the station's normal status signaling may not be readily perceptible by the user. Extension of such signaling should not draw excessive power from the station's battery, so as to maintain the maximum useful battery life for the station. Also, for commercial and economic reasons, the technique for providing extended notification should not require substantial modification of the mobile station.